) 


Leu^p)  \  rancis  UZ/m^von l 

~  *  \ 

30** 

[No.  23.— Second  Series,  3000.] 


Indian  Rights  Association, 

1305  Arch  Street, 

Phieadeephia,  April,  1895. 


Civil  Service  Reform  Essential  to  a  Successful 
Indian  Administration. 


An  address  delivered  at  a  parlor  meeting  held  at  the  house  of  Miss 
Mary  Coles,  Philadelphia,  March  25th,  1895,  in  the  interest  of  the 
Indian  Rights  Association,  by  its  Washington  Agent,  Mr.  Francis  F. 
Leupp. 

Of  the  entire  Civil  Service  of  the  United  States  no  branch 
stands  in  more  urgent  need  of  a  strict  merit  system  of  ap¬ 
pointment  and  tenure  of  office  than  the  Indian  Service;  but 
in  none  is  the  spoils  system  more  firmly  intrenched.  One 
reason  why  this  is  so  is  that  the  Indian  field  service  is  scat¬ 
tered  over  a  wide  area  of  country  and  distributed  among  a 
number  of  States  and  Territories,  each  agency  and  reserva¬ 
tion  constituting,  as  it  were,  a  little  separate  leasehold  kept 
in  feudal  subjection  to  the  political  leaders  of  the  Common¬ 
wealth  in  which  it  is  situated.  For  generations  past,  although 
the  real  needs  of  the  service  have  been  known  to  the  whole 
American  people,  the  Indian  question  has  been  considered 
rather  as  a  thing  apart  from  the  common  interests  of  the  in¬ 
habitants  of  the  Union  east  of  the  Mississippi  River,  and  has 
been  left  to  work  itself  out  in  the  same  happy-go-lucky  fash¬ 
ion  which,  until  lately,  has  characterized  the  gradual  solution 
of  other  great  political  and  economic  problems  confronting 
our  so-called  popular  Government.  In  other  words,  the- bulk 
of  the  people  have  recognized  the  existence  of  an  organized 
minority  known  as  politicians,  and  to  this  minority  has  been 
'ij  left,  almost  without  restraint,  both  the  formulation  and  the 
execution  of  the  Government’s  Indian  policy.  Even  in  cases 


3.nd  S&/\. ' 
HD*  £3 


(  2  ) 

where  an  Administration  at  Washington  has  been  induced  to 
accept  a  policy  prepared  for  it  by  thoughtful  and  concientious 
citizens  who  have  made  a  study  of  the  Indian  question,  the 
task  of  executing  it  has  been  turned  over  bodily  to  the  pro¬ 
fessional  element,  with  the  result  that  the  best  philanthropic 
efforts  have  often  brought  forth  comparatively  little  fruit. 

Under  our  peculiar  system  of  Government,  the  executive 
branch  is  largely  dependent,  at  every  stage  of  its  career,  upon 
the  friendly  co-operation  of  the  legislative  branch.  A  Presi¬ 
dent  cannot  make  the  laws  necessary  to  carry  out  the  pledges 
upon  the  faith  of  which  the  people  at  large  elected  him  to 
office;  for  this  he  must  depend  upon  the  Senate  and  House  of 
Representatives.  He  cannot  appoint  even  the  best  known 
and  most  respected  citizen  to  a  responsible  position  under  Gov¬ 
ernment  without  the  consent  of  the  Senate.  He  cannot  in  an 
emergency  defend  the  nation  against  foreign  assaults  and  en¬ 
croachments  unless  Congress  votes  the  munitions  of  war. 
Such  a  condition  of  dependence  was  designed  by  the  fathers 
of  the  Republic  merely  for  the  purpose  of  restraining  any  in¬ 
ordinate  and  selfish  ambition  on  the  part  of  a  President.  Its 
effect  has  been  to  reduce  a  President  whose  only  desire  is  the 
good  of  the  country  to  a  condition  where  he  must  take  his 
choice  between  exchanging  favors  with  influential  members 
of  Congress,  or  letting  many  vital  measures  fail  for  lack  of 
their  support.  The  terms  which  a  Congressman  offers  are 
often  hard  for  a  self-respecting  President  to  accept.  The  ulti¬ 
matum  would,  if  liberally  translated,  read  something  like  this: 

<  ‘  My  only  hope  of  continuing  my  public  career  rests  upon  my 
ability  to  provide  salaried  places  under  the  Government  for 
several  of  the  men  who  have  helped  me  in  my  campaigns  at 
home.  You  have  these  places  in  your  gift.  You  help  me, 
and  I  will  help  you.  If  you  refuse  me  your  aid,  I  will  join 
with  others  whom  you  treat  in  the  same  manner,  and  block 
the  passage  of  every  measure  and  defeat  the  confirmation  of 
every  appointment  on  which  you  have  set  your  heart.  The 
Constitution  has  given  us  the  upper  hand  in  a  contest  of  this 
sort,  and  we  propose  to  make  the  most  of  it.” 

The  effect  of  such  a  menace  has  been  to  intimidate  success¬ 
ive  Presidents,  until  it  has  come  to  be  accepted  as  a  settled 


MAR  1  0  2000 


rule,  having  almost  the  force  of  law,  that  the  President  shall 
not  make  an  appointment  of  an  officer,  whose  field  of  service 
is  to  be  in  the  United  States,  without  first  consulting  the 
wishes  of  the  Senators  and  Representatives  of  his  own  party 
within  whose  political  bailiwick  the  officer  is  to  perform  his 
duties.  In  the  far  west,  where  people  are  trained  to  a  more 
direct  way  of  doing  business  than  in  the  east,  ordinary  federal 
appointments  are  no  longer  subject  to  the  pleasant  fiction  of 
being  made  by  the  President  with  the  approval  of  members  of 
Congress,  but  are  frankly  proclaimed  as  made  by  the  members 
themselves,  the  President's  share  in  the  operation  being  con¬ 
fined  to  filling  in  a  few  blank  forms  and  signing  his  name  to 
them.  It  is  a  common  thing,  in  talking  to  a  member  of  Con¬ 
gress  about  a  federal  office  in  his  State,  to  be  met  at  the  out¬ 
set  with  the  remark:  “  Oh,  that’s  the  place  to  which  Smith 
was  appointed  last  week,  isn’t  it?  Well,  I  don’t  know  any¬ 
thing  about  it.  That  place  belongs  to  Senator  Blank,  and 
Smith  is  Blank’s  man.”  From  which  an  observing  foreigner 
might  be  led  to  infer  that  under  our  American  system  the 
offices  were  the  personal  property  of  individual  lawmakers, 
and  that  slavery  was  not  abolished  by  the  Thirteenth  Amend¬ 
ment  to  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States. 

Of  course,  this  system  of  barony  and  vassalage,  instead  of 
meaning  what  it  would  have  meant  in  the  dark  ages — the  pro¬ 
tection  of  the  vassal  by  his  lord  in  perpetuity — means  just  the 
opposite.  If  anything  like  stability  pertained  to  it,  there 
would  be  more  to  commend  it  to  common  sense.  As  it  is, 
the  Administration  is  subject  to  change  with  each  revulsion 
of  popular  feeling,  and  when  the  lord  ceases  to  be  a  power  at 
the  Executive  Mansion  the  vassal’s  days  are  numbered. 
Again,  if  the  vassal  loses  any  of  his  usefulness — not  in  the 
line  of  work  for  which  he  is  paid  by  the  Government,  but  in 
the  outside  activities  which  are  expected  of  him  by  his  pro¬ 
tector — the  public  service  knows  him  no  more,  and  another 
and  more  valuable  vassal  takes  his  place.  How  utterly 
demoralizing  such  a  state  of  things  must  be  in  any  part  of  the 
Government  I  need  not  explain.  Even  in  an  office  which 
deals  only  with  correspondence  or  statistics  it  is  ruinous,  but 
in  a  branch  of  the  service  which  deals  with  a  great  problem 


of  race  destiny  like  the  Indian  question  it  is  nothing  short  of 
devilish.  To  handle  the  affairs  of  an  Indian  agency  as  they 
should  be  handled  requires  not  only  honesty,  intelligence, 
decision  of  character  and  a  good  ordinary  education,  but  a 
considerable  knowledge  of  the  Indian  as  a  human  being,  of 
tribe  customs  and  traditions,  of  the  local  environment  both 
physical  and  moral,  and  of  official  precedent.  Such  knowl¬ 
edge  is  not  born  with  men;  it  comes  by  experience  only. 
The  effect  of  frequent  changes  of  agents,  therefore,  is  to  edu¬ 
cate  a  series  of  pupils,  some  competent  and  receptive  and 
others  not,  for  a  position  which  no  one  of  them  is  to  hold 
after  he  is  educated  for  it.  In  a  century  of  service  more 
good  could  be  done  by  keeping  in  office  four  dull  men  for 
twenty-five  years  each,  than  twenty-five  bright  men  for  only 
four  years  each.  The  dull  man  at  least  could  have  ground  into 
him,  by  a  certain  daily  routine  of  work,  some  ideas  devised 
by  persons  of  greater  intelligence,'  and  would  have  time  left 
in  which  to  make  practical  use  of  them;  but  the  bright  man 
would  no  sooner  have  absorbed  such  ideas  and  prepared  to 
put  them  into  practice  than  he  would  have  to  make  way  for  a 
successor  who  in  turn  must  begin  his  education  de  7iovo. 

Throwing  aside  even  the  question  of  acquired  dexterity  in 
handling  business,  and  coming  down  to  the  mere  human  or 
social  phases  of  the  subject,  the  agent  and  his  Indians  must 
become  acquainted  in  order  to  establish  those  relations  of 
sympathy  on  the  one  hand  and  confidence  on  the  other  which 
are  essential  to  a  successful  agency  administration.  The  In¬ 
dian  inherits  from  many  generations  of  ancestors  a  sense  of 
self-sufficiency  which  makes  him  intolerant  of  domination  by 
a  member  of  another  race,  and  suspicious  of  the  sincerity  even 
of  well-meant  advances  from  his  superior.  A  horse  with  any 
natural  fire  in  him  is  bound  to  be  injured  by  a  frequent  change 
of  drivers,  and  no  one  need  be  told  that  the  more  sensitive 
human  animal  whose  spirit  is  not  yet  broken  is  better  for  be¬ 
ing  guided  by  one  hand  than  by  a  hundred.  I  have  some¬ 
times  fancied  that  the  success  which  has  attended  the  admin¬ 
istration  of  army  officers  as  agents  in  places  where  a  succes¬ 
sion  of  civilians  have  proved  failures,  may  have  been  due  not 
entirely  to  a  difference  in  the  men  and  their  methods — for 


(  5  ) 


there  are  individual  differences  between  army  officers  as  well 
as  civilians — but  that  it  might  be  traced  partly  to  the  military 
uniform.  In  this  one  respect  at  least  a  series  of  arnry  officers 
are  alike.  In  dealing  with  uniformed  officers,  the  Indian 
does  not  have  forced  upon  him  in  quite  so  pointed  a  way  the 
fact  that  he  has  been  passed  from  hand  to  hand. 

The  evils  of  a  condition  as  chaotic  as  that  which  prevails  in 
the  administration  of  our  Indian  agencies  can  best  be  illus¬ 
trated  by  a  few  cases  in  point.  In  1884,  Mr.  V.  T.  McGilli- 
cuddy  was  agent  of  the  Pine  Ridge  reservation.  He  had  the 
reputation  of  being  one  of  the  best  agents  in  the  employ  of 
the  Government,  notwithstanding  the  efforts  of  a  number  of 
persons  whom  he  had  antagonized  to  break  him  down.  He 
had  an  immense  influence  over  the  Sioux,  a  tribe  who  needed 
an  agent  with  a  firm  hand,  and  some  of  whose  most  unman¬ 
ageable  members,  veterans  of  successive  campaigns  against 
the  whites,  were  gathered  at  Pine  Ridge.  The  election  of  Mr. 
Cleveland  and  the  transfer  of  the  national  Administration  to 
a  new  party  occurred  at  a  time  when  a  spirit  of  unrest  was 
manifesting  itself  among  even  those  Sioux  who  had  begun  to 
show  some  aspirations  toward  the  civilization  of  the  whites. 
It  was  enough  for  the  new  authorities  of  the  Indian  Office  to 
know  that  Mr.  McGillicuddy  had  held  his  place  under  a  series 
of  Republican  Administrations:  that  fact  doomed  him  to  dis¬ 
missal  as  an  offensive  partisan.  His  good  service  of  many 
years  counted  for  nothing;  for  a  certain  Mr.  Gallagher,  a  re¬ 
spectable  elderly  Democratic  politician  from  Indiana,  was  felt 
to  deserve  at  his  party’s  hands  a  place  with  just  about  the 
salary  attached  to  the  Pine  Ridge  agency;  so  out  went  Mc¬ 
Gillicuddy  and  in  went  Gallagher.  For  all  that  I  know,  Mr. 
Gallagher  was  an  honest  and  well-meaning  man,  but  he  knew 
almost  nothing  of  the  Indians;  and,  as  he  doubtless  reasoned 
that  he  would  have  to  give  place,  in  his  turn,  to  some  other 
politician  when  the  next  Administration  came  in,  he  took  no 
particular  pains  to  make  their  acquaintance.  This  expecta¬ 
tion,  the  sequel  shows,  was  quite  justified.  In  1888-  a  Re¬ 
publican  President  was  elected.  The  insufficiency  of  the 
appropriations  made  by  Congress  for  subsistence  of  the  Indians 
resulted  in  some  serious  economies  in  food  at  Pine  Ridge. 


The  Indians,  when  they  suffered  from  hunger,  resorted  to 
slaughtering  their  own  breeding  stock,  and  Gallagher  was  too 
tender-hearted  to  forbid  them,  although,  of  course,  it  gave  a 
bad  backset  to  their  advance  in  the  ways  of  civilization.  On 
the  heels  of  these  misfortunes  came  the  outbreak  of  the 
Messiah  craze,  which  caused  the  Indians  to  drop  everything 
else  and  join  in  the  exciting  ghost  dance.  On  the  plea  that 
Gallagher  had  proved  too  mild-natured  to  cope  with  the  rebel¬ 
lious  spirits  of  the  tribe,  he  was  removed  at  this  critical 
juncture.  His  removal  would  have  been  worthy  of  all  appro¬ 
bation  if  it  had  been  for  the  purpose  of  putting  McGillicuddy 
back  into  a  place  for  which  he  was  fitted  by  years  of  experi¬ 
ence,  and  where  he  could  have  been  of  immeasurable  service 
to  the  Government;  but  such  was  not  the  case.  Senator  Petti¬ 
grew  of  South  Dakota  had  promised  the  Pine  Ridge  job  to 

% 

Dr.  D.  F.  Royer,  who  added  to  Gallagher’s  ignorance  the 
most  pitiful  ineffectiveness  that  has  perhaps  ever  been  wit¬ 
nessed  in  an  agent  in  such  an  emergency.  As  soon  as  the 
new  agent  was  installed  pandemonium  broke  loose  at  the 
agency,  and  Royer,  instead  of  discounting  some  of  his  other 
shortcomings  by  a  display  of  pluck,  fled  before  the  storm, 
deserting  his  post  when  it  was  most  necessary  for  the  Govern¬ 
ment  to  have  a  courageous  and  cool-headed  representative  on 
the  spot. 

The  manner  of  Royer’s  appointment  was  quite  as  charac¬ 
teristic  as  the  manner  of  his  leave-taking.  Commissioner 
Morgan,  Secretary  Noble  and  President  Harrison  were 
prompt  enough  to  wash  their  hands  of  responsibility  for  his 
brief  and  ignoble  career  as  agent,  and  thus  the  fact  came  out 
that  they  had  had  no  share  in  the  business  beyond  a  perfunc¬ 
tory  assent  to  an  appointment  already  made,  in  effect,  by 
Senator  Pettigrew.  The  Senator  had  claimed  the  place  and 
named  the  man  to  fill  it;  the  executive  branch  of  the  Govern¬ 
ment,  designated  by  the  Constitution  as  the  appointing  power, 
simply  registered  the  Senator’s  will,  and  the  deed  was  done. 
It  is  humiliating  to  add  the  confession  that  the  only  way  in 
which  the  Administration  could  escape  the  imposition  of 
another  possible  Royer  by  the  same  Senatorial  boss  was  to 
detail  an  army  officer  to  take  charge  as  acting  agent.  There 


is  no  doubt — now  that  we  can  go  back  and  study  the  Pine 
Ridge  incident  in  the  cold  light  of  history — that  all  the 
upheaval,  and  riot,  and  bloodshed  and  suffering  might  have 
been  spared  if  the  first  blunder  had  not  been  made  in  the 
removal  of  McGillicuddy — an  act  of  political  partisanship 
utterly  hostile  to  the  principles  of  Civil  Service  Reform. 

Such  facts  as  I  have  here  set  forth  are  enough  to  make 
every  respectable  American  blush  for  his  country  and  for  the 
boasted  virtues  of  popular  government.  It  is  only  with  shame 
that  one  can  see  changes  made  every  few  years  in  offices 
which  have  no  more  to  do  with  politics  than  with  the  price  of 
stocks  or  the  eclipses  of  the  moon.  If  the  whole  miserable 
business  were  not  so  vicious  in  principle,  it  would  sometimes 
be  positively  comical.  Take,  for  example,  the  case  of  a  man 
named  Connell,  who  was  appointed  a  harness-maker  under 
McGillicuddy,  although  personally  a  Democrat — the  explana¬ 
tion  being,  without  doubt,  that  he  was  so  good  at  his  trade, 
and  so  useful,  that  McGillicuddy  ignored  all  secondary  con¬ 
siderations.  It  so  happened  that  among  the  papers  recom¬ 
mending  Connell’s  appointment  the  only  letter  bearing  a 
well-known  signature  was  one  from  a  very  prominent  Repub¬ 
lican,  who  was  then  in  Congress  and  has  since  been  given  a 
seat  on  the  bench.  When  the  Democratic  Commissioner  of 
Indian  Affairs  took  hold  in  1885,  Connell’s  papers  were  scru¬ 
tinized  in  the  office  at  Washington,  and  he  was  promptly 
removed.  He  could  not  understand  why  this  was  done,  and 
visited  the  Commissioner  to  inquire  about  it.  He  was 
informed  that  there  were  no  charges  or  complaints  against 
him,  but  that  he  was  removed  because  he  was  a  Republican. 
It  then  turned  out  that  the  only  reason  the  Commissioner 
supposed  him  to  belong  to  the  obnoxious  party  was  because  of 
the  letter  of  recommendation  from  the  conspicuous  Republican 
already  mentioned.  Connell  at  once  proceeded  to  summon 
witnesses  from  his  old  home,  who  testified  to  the  Commis¬ 
sioner’s  satisfaction,  not  that  their  friend  was  a  good  harness- 
maker,  or  that  he  had  a  faculty  for  training  young  Indians  at 
a  trade,  or  that  he  was  especially  useful  and  efficient  as  a 
helper  about  the  agency,  but  that  he  was  never  guilty  of  the 


crime  of  voting  a  Republican  ticket  !  Upon  the  strength  of 
these  assurances  the  Commissioner  reinstated  him. 

I  have  dwelt  at  some  length  upon  affairs  at  Pine  Ridge  be¬ 
cause  the  history  of  that  agency  for  the  last  ten  years  has 
afforded  a  more  striking  series  of  object  lessons  illustrative  of 
the  truths  I  am  trying  to  impress  than  that  of  any  other  one 
place  in  the  Indian  establishment.  I  have  cited  the  case  of 
Mr.  McGillicuddy  as  a  typical  instance  of  a  successful  agent 
who  owed  his  usefulness  to  his  long  experience  as  well  as  to 
his  character  and  practical  acquirements.  I  cited  the  case  of 
Mr.  Gallagher  of  Indiana  to  show  the  folly  of  turning  out  a 
trained  servant  to  put  in  a  verdant  one  imported  from  a  dis¬ 
tance,  no  matter  how  respectable  in  a  general  way.  I  cited 
the  case  of  Dr.  Royer  of  South  Dakota  to  show  the  sort  of 
stuff  which  the  ‘  ‘  home  rule  ’  ’  humbug  foists  upon  the  service 
when  satisfaction  of  the  spoils  greed  is  the  only  consideration 
kept  in  view.  I  cited  the  case  of  Connell  to  show  the  total 
disregard  of  questions  of  fitness,  or  the  reverse,  under  a  sys¬ 
tem  in  which  partisan  politics  dictate  removals  and  appoint¬ 
ments.  Uet  me  invite  your  attention  to  one  more  typical 
case  at  the  same  agency,  by  way  of  showing  how,  under  the 
spoils  system,  the  places  are  twisted  to  fit  the  men,  not  the 
men  chosen  to  fit  the  places. 

When  Dr.  Royer  was  appointed  agent  he  was  not  the  only 
candidate  in  the  field.  A  rival  applicant  was  a  man  named 
Gleason,  who  had  some  influential  political  backing  in  the 
State,  although  Senator  Pettigrew  was  already  pledged  to 
Royer  and  the  agency  was  recognized  as  “  Pettigrew’s  place.” 
Gleason’s  friends  were  able  to  make  a  “deal”  with  Royer, 
whereby,  in  consideration  of  their  not  giving  him  further 
trouble,  he  should  appoint  Gleason  his  clerk.  Royer  lived 
faithfully  up  to  this  bargain;  and  no  sooner  had  he  become 
fairly  warm  in  his  seat  as  agent  than  he  marked  the  Demo¬ 
cratic  clerk  then  in  office  for  dismissal  and  named  Gleason  to 
succeed  him.  Gleason’s  qualifications  for  this  position  may 
be  judged  from  the  fact  that  his  former  occupations  were 
stated  as  ‘  ‘  ranchman  and  railroad  constructor.  ”  It  is  scarcely 
wonderful  that  after  a  few  weeks  he  was  found  so  unfit  for 
the  work  that,  in  spite  of  compacts  and  understandings,  he 


9 


(  9  ) 

was  put  out  again  and  the  old  clerk  reinstated.  Gleason 
could  not  forgive  Royer  for  what  he  denounced  as  a  piece  of 
treachery  and  bad  faith.  He  made  no  pretense  of  denying 
his  utter  uselessness  in  the  position  of  clerk;  but  the  one 
thought  uppermost  in  his  mind  was  that  a  bargain  was  a  bar¬ 
gain;  that  he  had  been  promised  a  place  which  should  bring 
him  $ 1200  salary,  and  that  the  money  was  not  coming  in. 
As  a  sort  of  ‘  ‘  consolation  prize  ’  ’  he  was  tacked  on  to  the 
agency  payroll  under  the  title  of  “additional  farmer,”  and 
from  all  accounts  made  about  as  poor  a  record  at  the  agricult¬ 
ural  end  of  the  concern  as  he  had  at  the  clerical  end;  but  he 
was,  at  any  rate,  wdiere  he  could  do  less  harm  with  his  ignor¬ 
ance  and  general  inefficiency. 

I  do  not  believe  that  I  need  go  over  any  more  ground  to 
the  same  purpose.  Instances  and  illustrations  might  be  mul¬ 
tiplied  by  the  hour  touching  every  joint  and  sinew  of  the  ser¬ 
vice,  and  dotted  all  over  the  map.  I  know  that  the  question 
in  everyone’s  mind  is:  How  can  we  change  such  a  system? 
The  answer  is  not  far  to  seek.  Apply  to  the  Indian  Service 
the  same  principles  of  Civil  Service  Reform  which  have  been 
applied  with  so  much  success  in  many  other  places  in  the 
Government  and  you  will  get  equally  satisfactory  results. 
In  the  Indian  Service  are  about  eighteen  hundred  positions  of 
all  classes;  only  about  seven  hundred  of  these  have  been 
brought  under  the  Civil  Service  Rules.  If  I  could  have  my 
way,  I  would  bring  in  all  the  remaining  eleven  hundred.  I 
am  aware  that  this  would  be  considered  in  some  quarters  an 
extreme  view;  but  no  candid  observer  will  deny  that  several 
hundred  more  ought  to,  and  could,  be  brought  in.  At  pres¬ 
ent,  physicians,  school  superintendents  and  assistant  superin¬ 
tendents,  school  teachers  and  matrons  are  included,  and  the 
Secretary  of  the  Interior  announced  his  intention  some  time 
ago  to  treat  assistant  teachers  in  like  manner,  though  I  believe 
that  the  actual  rule  to  that  effect  still  hangs  fire.  The  list 
ought  to  be  swelled  by  the  clerks,  disciplinarians,  industrial 
teachers,  assistant  matrons,  and  seamstresses  and  their  assist¬ 
ants,  if  no  more. 

You  will  doubtless  ask  what  is  the  reason  these  classes  of 
functionaries  have  not  already  been  brought  under  the  Rules, 


if  such  a  thing  be  practicable.  There  is  no  reason  for  their 
continued  exclusion — only  an  excuse .  In  the  case  of  clerks, 
it  is  contended  that  they  have  custody  of  some  of  the  property 
at  the  agency  and  that  they  stand  in  a  somewhat  confidential 
relation  to  the  superintendent,  and  therefore  ought  to  be 
selected  by  him  from  among  the  men  whom  he  personally 
knows  and  trusts.  To  this  I  answer  that  you  can  get  as  many 
men  who  are  honest  and  worthy  of  trust  among  those  who 
pass  a  Civil  Service  examination  and  come  out  at  the  top  of 
the  list,  as  among  those  who  have  failed  in  every  other  busi¬ 
ness  and  must  therefore  pick  up  a  job  under  Government  as 
the  only  alternative  of  starving  to  death.  That  would  stand 
to  reason,  I  think,  even  if  we  had  not  an  abundance  of  ex¬ 
perience  in  all  parts  of  the  Government  service  as  corrobora¬ 
tive  proof.  The  plea  that  the  clerk’s  relations  with  the  agent 
are  personal  and  confidential  is  quite  as  inapplicable  as  the 
other.  Take  the  case  I  have  already  instanced,  of  the  man 
Gleason  at  Pine  Ridge:  Gleason  was  not  given  his  clerkship 
because  he  was  a  personal  friend  or  confidant  of  the  agent, 
but  because  the  exigencies  of  politics  necessitated  his  being 
‘  ‘  taken  care  of  ’  ’  somewhere,  and  it  seemed  more  convenient  to 
‘  ‘  take  care  of  ’  ’  him  there  than  elsewhere.  And  this  is  what 
is  found  to  happen  wherever  the  excuse  of  ‘  ‘  confidential 
capacity  ”  is  urged  for  keeping  a  particular  office  in  the  spoils 
category.  The  end  invariably  is  that  the  politicians  who 
created  the  chief  create  also  the  “confidential”  subordinate, 
and  the  excuse  proves  itself  a  hollow  sham,  as  all  such  ex¬ 
cuses  must. 

An  argument  commonly  used  by  the  spoilsmen  in  opposing 
the  extension  of  the  Civil  Service  Rules  to  cover  certain  in¬ 
ferior  grades  of  employment,  like  the  assistant  matrons, 
seamstresses,  etc.,  at  the  Indian  schools,  is  that  there  is  no 
form  of  examination  which  will  satisfactorily  test  the  fitness 
of  applicants  for  such  places.  This  has  a  specious  force  in  the 
minds  of  many  good  people  who  have  not  been  in  a  position 
to  watch  the  progress  of  Civil  Service  Reform  in  the  federal 
Government  at  close  range.  But  those  of  us  who  for  years 
have  been  on  the  ground  at  Washington,  and  in  a  position  to 
see  what  was  going  on  behind  the  scenes,  know  that  the  argu- 


( II ) 

ment  is  wholly  absurd  and  untenable.  I  care  not  what  the 
office  is,  so  long  as  it  is  not  political  in  its  nature:  an  intel¬ 
ligent  and  sincere  Civil  Service  Commission,  such  as  we  have 
now,  cooperating  with  an  equally  intelligent  and  sincere  head 
of  a  department  or  bureau,  can  devise  a  test  of  fitness  which 
will  be  both  practicable  in  its  workings  and  satisfactory  in  its 
results.  The  spoilsmen  have  tried,  over  and  over  again,  to 
defeat  the  plans  of  the  Reformers  by  finding  difficulties  in  the 
way  of  proper  examinations  to  cover  particular  cases,  and  they 
have  been  themselves  defeated  every  time.  I  remember  very 
well  how  long  the  Railway  Mail  Service  was  kept  in  the 
hands  of  the  patronage-mongers  on  the  plea  that  there  was  no 
way  of  examining  an  applicant  which  would  adequately  test 
his  capacity  for  quick  and  accurate  work  in  sorting  mail,  or 
his  physical  soundness  and  power  of  endurance,  so  necessary 
in  a  service  which  involves  constant  and  wearisome  travel, 
irregularity  of  hours,  and  work  under  all  sorts  of  disadvan¬ 
tageous  conditions  of  light,  ventilation,  heating,  motion  and 
space.  But  as  soon  as  all  parties  concerned  honestly  put  their 
heads  together,  they  worked  out  an  experimental  scheme;  and 
as  experience  has  shown  a  weak  spot  here  and  there,  they 
have  mended  or  strengthened  it,  till  at  last  they  have  built  up 
a  system  which  has  not  its  equal  in  the  world.  What  degree 
of  perfection  it  has  reached,  you  may  judge  when  I  tell  you 
that  under  the  old  practice  of  picking  out  Railway  Mail  clerks 
by  political  or  personal  favoritism,  even  under  the  very  best 
conditions  as  to  stability  of  tenure  which  could  prevail  then, 
the  proportion  of  errors  made  in  the  work  of  the  men  never 
fell  below  one  error  in  every  5,575  pieces  of  mail  matter 
handled;  whereas  now,  with  the  service  for  somewhat  more 
than  five  years  under  the  honest  operation  of  the  Civil  Service 
Rules,  the  errors  are  only  one  in  about  7,900,  with  a  fair 
prospect  that,  in  the  course  of  a  few  years  more,  the  propor- 
ition  will  be  reduced  to  one  in  ten  thousand. 

A  similar  opposition  manifested  itself  when  it  was  proposed 
to  bring  the  corps  of  post  office  inspectors  under  the  Civil 
Service  Rules.  These  officers  are  the  detectives  of  the  postal 
service.  Mr.  Wanamaker  expressed  very  happily  the  char¬ 
acter  of  their  duties  and  the  mental  capacity  expected  of  them 


/ 

/ 


(  12  ) 

when  he  said  that  they  were  the  ‘  ‘  eyes  and  ears  of  the  Post¬ 
master-General.”  He  was  at  that  time  opposed  to  their  being 
subject  to  a  Civil  Service  examination.  My  impression  is 
that  he  afterward  admitted  that  this  was  a  misjudgment. 
However  that  may  be,  I  can  quote  the  statement  made  to  me 
personally  by  Postmaster- General  Bissell,  that  when  he 
entered  office  he  believed  it  a  great  mistake  to  require  the 
selection  of  inspectors  from  a  Civil  Service  eligible  list,  but 
that  experience  showed  him  he  was  wrong,  and  that  this 
method  of  selection  gave  him  the  best  material  he  had  in  the 
inspectors’  force. 

Some  time  ago  a  Collector  at  one  of  the  custom  houses  on 
the  Mexican  frontier  complained  that  the  Civil  Service  exami¬ 
nations  were  not  calculated  to  furnish  the  sort  of  subordinates 
he  needed  in  his  semi-civilized  district,  where  the  only  way  to 
break  up  smuggling  often  is  to  ride  the  smugglers  down, 
lasso  their  horses  and  exchange  pistol-shots  with  the  marks¬ 
men  of  the  gang.  What  he  needed  in  his  men  was  not  a  col¬ 
lege  education,  he  said,  but  .strength,  bravery,  quickness,  and 
a  knowledge  of  how  to  shoot  and  ride.  I  suppose  the  Collec¬ 
tor  thought  that  when  he  made  this  complaint  he  wrote  the 
death  warrant  of  Civil  Service  Reform  in  his  district,  at  any 
rate.  But  he  did  not  know  with  whom  he  had  to  deal.  Mr. 
Procter,  the  president  of  the  Civil  Service  Commission,  to 
whom  his  communication  was  referred,  is  a  veteran  Con¬ 
federate  trooper,  who  feels  more  at  home  on  a  horse’s  back,  if 
possible,  than  in  an  arm-chair;  his  senior  colleague,  Mr. 
Lyman,  was  a  Yankee  volunteer  soldier  from  Connecticut 
during  the  Civil  War,  and  is  familiar  with  the  smell  of  powder 
and  the  whistle  of  bullets;  and  the  third  member  of  the  Com¬ 
mission,  before  whom  all  of  our  faith  uncover  as  to  the  prince 
of  Civil  Service  Reformers — the  peerless  Theodore  Roosevelt — 
is  a  trained  frontiersman,  with  the  marksmanship  of  a  bear- 
hunter,  the  agility  of  an  Indian,  the  toughness  of  a  cowboy 
and  the  courage  of  an  American  gentleman.  This  trio  said 
at  once:  “  You  want  an  examination  especially  suited  to  your 
peculiar  needs  ?  Very  well,  you  shall  have  one.  You  shall 
have  tests  for  horsemanship,  sharpshooting,  strength,  nerve, 
quickness  of  motion,  readiness  of  resource — anything  and 


(  13  ) 

everything  you  desire.  And  you  need  not  disturb  your  mind 
about  the  difficulty  of  getting  judges  to  pass  upon  the  relative 
merits  of  candidates.  We  are  not  exactly  a  parcel  of  tender- 
feet  up  this  way.  We  know  a  little  something  about  horses 
and  firearms  ourselves.” 

So  you  see,  if  the  only  thing  that  stands  in  the  way  of 
bringing  any  peculiar  line  of  Government  employment  under 
the  Civil  Service  Rules  is  the  difficulty  of  devising  an  ade¬ 
quate  merit-test,  we  have  in  Washington  now  a  Commission 
able  to  cope  with  every  subject — from  sewing  on  buttons  to 
performing  in  a  Wild  West  show. 

Thus  far  I  have  considered  only  the  narrowest  phase  of  the 
subject — the  direct  application  of  Civil  Service  Reform  princi¬ 
ples  to  the  Indian  Service  itself.  The  execution  of  an 
enlightened  Indian  policy  demands,  however,  the  application 
of  the  same  principles  to  other  branches  of  the  public  service. 
Indeed ,  in  a  general  way  it  may  be  said  that  the  various  parts 
of  the  great  organism  which  we  call  our  national  Government, 
are  so  intertwined  and  corelated  that  there  are  very  few 
important  principles  applicable  to  one  which  are  not  appli¬ 
cable  in  equal  measure  to  all  the  rest — the  only  points  of 
essential  difference  being  matters  of  detail. 

I  do  not  know  how  I  can  better  illustrate  my  proposition 
than  by  citing  an  actual  case  which  has  recently  come  under 
the  notice  of  some  of  those  present  here  this  evening,  and 
which  has  impressed  me,  more  than  anything  else  I  have 
encountered  in  a  long  time,  with  the  importance  to  the  Indian 
Service,  and  to  a  progressive  Indian  administration,  of  extend¬ 
ing  the  merit  system  to  the  Civil  Service  generally. 

In  the  spring  of  1893,  a  squaw-man  named  Fielder,  living 
near  the  Cheyenne  River  agency  in  South  Dakota,  and  known 
to  be  a  drunkard  and  of  violent  temper,  beat  his  Indian  wife 
into  a  state  of  insensibility.  Her  only  offence  was  a  refusal 
to  give  him  some  money  which  she  owned  in  her  own  right, 
but  which  he  wanted  to  buy  drink  or  pay  his  debts.  .  She 
dragged  herself,  bleeding  and  miserable,  to  the  agency,  and 
the  agent,  Mr.  Lillibridge,  sent  some  of  his  Indian  police  with 
a  message  to  Fielder,  and  tried  to  induce  him  to  come  in 
peaceably  and  submit  to  be  locked  in  the  guardhouse  till  he 


could  be  turned  over  to  the  judicial  authorities  on  a  charge 
of  assault.  Fielder  at  first  seemed  disposed  to  surrender  him¬ 
self,  but  changed  his  mind;  and  when  at  last  it  was  obvious 
that  he  intended  to  keep  out  of  the  agent’s  way  altogether 
the  latter  sent  a  small  squad  of  the  police,  picking  out  the 
most  obedient  and  trustworthy  men  in  the  force,  with  instruc¬ 
tions  to  arrest  the  culprit  and  bring  him  in.  Fielder  not  only 
shut  himself  in  his  cabin  and  refused  to  let  the  police  in,  but, 
when  they  attempted  to  force  an  entrance,  ran  out  at  them 
with  an  axe,  and  would  have  killed  one  or  more  of  them  if 
they  had  not  used  their  pistols  in  self  defence.  Fielder  was 
killed  in  the  struggle,  though  there  was  nothing  to  indicate 
that  unnecessary  violence  had  been  used.  When  the  agent 
reported  the  facts  to  the  Indian  Bureau  in  Washington  the 
Bureau  referred  his  communication  to  the  Department  of 
Justice,  under  whose  instructions  the  District -Attorney  for 
South  Dakota  had  the  Indians  arrested  and  brought  before 
a  grand  jury  at  Pierre.  The  grand  jury  sifted  the  case 
thoroughly,  having  the  advantage  of  sitting  near  the  spot 
where  the  homicide  occurred,  which  enabled  them  to  sum¬ 
mon  witnesses  promptly  and  at  little  expense.  After  a 
careful  investigation  they  reported  that  there  was  no  ground 
for  indicting  the  Indians,  and  the  latter  were  set  at  liberty. 
Nothing  more  was  heard  or  thought  of  the  matter  for  nearly 
two  years.  Meanwhile,  the  agent  at  Cheyenne  River  had 
been  changed  and  a  new  District- Attorney  appointed.  Sud¬ 
denly  the  new  District- Attorney,  a  local  politician,  dis¬ 
covered  that  it  was  his  duty  to  reopen  the  Fielder  homicide 
case;  and  with  a  half-breed  witness  of  bad  or  doubtful  char¬ 
acter  he  went  before  a  grand  jury  sitting  at  Dead  wood — the 
most  distant  point  in  the  State  where  a  United  States  court  is 
held — and  procured  an  indictment  of  seven  of  the  Indian 
policemen;  he  then  had  them  arrested  and  dragged  all  the 
way  across  the  State,  of  course  to  the  profit  of  the  deputy- 
marshals  who  handled  the  job,  and  who  will  have  fat  bills  for 
mileage,  living  expenses,  and  per  diem  compensation  to  turn 
in  to  the  Government.  A  sensational  trial  of  a  batch  of  In¬ 
dians  was  a  godsend,  moreover,  to  the  jaded  appetites  of  those 
Deadwood  hoodlums  who  were  ready  to  accept  as  a  foregone 


(  i5  ) 

conclusion  that  to  try  an  Indian  for  his  life  meant  to  hang 
him.  Undoubtedly  the  whole  operation  is  good  for  a  big 
double-handful  of  votes  whenever  this  enterprising  District- 
Attorney  becomes  a  candidate  for  any  elective  office. 

The  Commissioner  of  Indian  Affairs,  Judge  Browning,  was 
naturally  very  much  exercised  over  this  turn  of  affairs.  He 
wrote  to  the  new  agent  at  Cheyenne  River,  Mr.  Couchman, 
for  a  detailed  report  of  the  case  in  its  later  phases.  This  he 
referred,  through  the  Secretary  of  the  Interior,  in  a  most  re¬ 
spectful  and  courteous  manner,  to  the  Attorney-General,  ask¬ 
ing  that  instructions  might  be  sent  to  the  District-Attorney  to 
enter  a  nolle  prosequi.  He  took  pains  to  represent,  not  only 
the  inherent  injustice  of  the  proposed  prosecution,  but  the  in¬ 
expediency  of  giving  the  Indian  police  and  the  Indians  gen¬ 
erally  an  impression  that,  when  they  were  acting  under  orders 
of  an  agent  and  it  became  necessary  to  use  force  with  a  white 
man,  they  were  liable  to  be  put  in  jeopardy  of  their  lives  as  a 
reward  for  doing  their  duty. 

The  Attorney- General,  instead  of  accepting  this  in  the 
spirit  in  which  it  was  offered,  as  a  suggestion  which  might 
save  him  from  making  a  serious  mistake,  resented  it  as  an  in¬ 
terference  with  his  prerogative.  All  he  was  willing  to  do  was 
to  write  to  the  District-Attorney  and  ask  for  his  side  of  the 
case.  The  District- Attorney  responded  with  a  report  which 
showed  that  he  either  did  not  know  anything  about  the  facts 
or  was  willing  to  distort  them,  and  on  the  strength  of  this  the 
Attorney- General  telegraphed  him  to  “go  ahead.” 

The  sequel  may  be  briefly  told.  There  was  a  tedious  and 
expensive  trial,  which  cost  the  prisoners  every  penny  they 
had  in  the  world,  and  in  which  the  counsel  fees  for  their  de¬ 
fence  had  to  be  guaranteed  by  the  Indian  Rights  Association 
as  the  only  apparent  means  of  preventing  the  poor  fellows  - 
from  being  convicted  by  default,  for  the  Indian  Bureau  was 
powerless  under  the  law  to  contribute  anything.  Five  of  the 
prisoners  were  acquitted  outright.  The  remaining  two  were 
found  guilty  of  ‘  ‘  assault  with  intent  to  do  great  bodily  harm,  ’  ’ 
an  offence  for  which  there  seems  to  be  no  definition  in  the 
laws  of  South  Dakota  and  for  which  it  will  therefore  be 
impracticable  to  hold  them. 


C  16  )  I 

This  may  seem  a  long  way  around  to  the  very  direct  point 
which  I  wTish  to  make;  but  you  will  see  the  application  when  I 
call  your  attention  to  a  few  condensed  propositions: 

First.  The  trial  proved  that  there  was  no  ground  whatever 
for  prosecuting  the  Indians. 

Second.  If  this  unrighteous  prosecution  had  gone  against 
the  prisoners,  through  lack  of  a  proper  defence,  discipline  on 
the  Indian  reservations  in  the  Northwest  would  not  have  been 
worth  a  rush  from  that  day  forward,  and  the  fruits  of  a  quarter- 
century  of  humane  effort  would  have  been  scattered  to  the 
winds. 

Third.  The  reopening  of  the  case  would  never  have  oc¬ 
curred  if  the  District-Attorney  who  first  investigated  it  had 
remained  in  office. 

Fourth.  That  District-Attorney  was  retired  to  private  life, 
not  because  he  was  an  unsatisfactory  officer,  but  because  he 
was  a  Republican;  and  another  man,  who  did  not  know  his 
business,  or  was  willing  to  subordinate  his  duty  to  considera¬ 
tions  of  personal  advantage,  was  put  into  his  place,  merely 
because  he  was  a  Democrat. 

To  sum  up:  An  obviously  useless  prosecution  was  pressed, 
which  involved  a  large  expense  to  the  Government;  which 
impoverished  seven  worthy  and  deserving  Indians;  which 
might  have  ended  in  taking  several  human  lives;  and  which, 
in  that  event,  would  undoubtedly  have  been  followed  by 
another  bloody  Indian  war  and  given  a  backset  of  twenty 
years  to  frontier  civilization.  And  all  this  is  traceable  directly 
to  the  fact  that  District- Attorney  ships,  like  Indian  agencies, 
are  still  treated  as  spoils. 

Can  there  be  any  doubt  that  all  hope  of  the  future  for  the 
reform  of  our  Indian  administration  is  bound  up  with  the 
prospects  of  Civil  Service  Reform,  not  only  in  the  Indian 
service,  but  in  every  one  of  the  corelated  and  interdependent 
branches  of  our  Governmental  organization  ? 


